Why is synthesis needed?

To more effectively meet pressing research demands by aggregating and integrating research outcomes into useful knowledge.

Society’s challenges are becoming increasingly complex (climate change, mass migration, etc.). Addressing these wicked problems requires assembling, interpreting and distilling research materials and findings from multiple sources. To have real world impact, researchers must integrate lots of inputs into accessible knowledge outcomes.

As a counterpoint to an academic research culture that encourages disaggregation of knowledge into measurable research commodities.

Contemporary academic research culture pushes researchers in a direction exactly opposite to what society requires. Funding depends on publication records. Pressure to publish leads to disaggregating findings into the thinnest product possible. Synthesis is needed to put together what academic research culture pulls apart.

To achieve the cumulative knowledge required to meet the UN’s sustainable development goals (cf. 1 & 2 above)

Successful collaboration builds on many efforts, past and present to produce knowledge with value that exceeds the sum of its parts. Synthesis helps collaborators break out of the already known by putting together their knowledge contributions in previously untested ways.